Women Authors From The United States

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash."

"I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up."

"Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of questions: from questions that Mr.Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury the picture of the Ewell's home life."

"Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail."

"“There has been a request,” Judge Taylor said, “that this courtroom be cleared of spectators, or at least of women and children, a request that will be denied for the time being. People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it until the whole boiling of you come before me on contempt charges. Mr. Ewell, you will keep your testimony within the confines of Christian English usage, if that is possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer.”"

"So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something — that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children."

"Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in."

"She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl."

"Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language."

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

"It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you."

"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles 'em."

"The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."

"And it's certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?"

"As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me."

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

"Well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn’t dream of interrupting you at golf."

"Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read. Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink."

"A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole."

"Why Family Therapy?...because it deals with family pain."

"I think if I have one message, one thing before I die that most of the world would know, it would be that the event does not determine how to respond to the event. That is a purely personal matter. The way in which we respond will direct and influence the event more than the event itself."

"Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

"We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth."

"To all my friends, colleagues and family: I send you love. Please support me in my passage to a new life. I have no other way to thank you than this. You have all played a significant part in my development of loving. As a result, my life has been rich and full, so I leave feeling very grateful."

"I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided-because I've been on the verge of marriage many times-I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do."

"I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made."

"The clouds, never expect it, When it rains But the sea changes color, But the sea does not change, And so with the slow graceful Flow of age, I went forth with an, Age old desire to please, On the edge of seventeen."

"Well, did she make you cry, Make you break down, Shatter your illusions of love?"

"I don't want to know the reasons why, Love keeps right on walking down the line."

"Thunder only happens when it's raining, Players only love you when they're playing, Say, women, they will come and they will go, When the rain washes you clean you'll know."

"I'll begin not to love you Turn around, see me runnin' I'll say I loved you years ago Tell myself you never loved me, no And did you say she was pretty? And did you say that she loves you? Baby, I don't wanna know."

"Dreams unwind Love's a state of mind"

"She rings like a bell through the night And wouldn't you love to love her?"

"I can be. I do not normally try to be. In fact, there have been some reviews—which I’ve loved—that said I didn't try to sell my show on sex, that I sang my show. On the other hand, I know I'm cute. I can dance. I don't have a bad figure. I know exactly what I am. I'm certainly no great beauty. I know exactly how far I can go."

"…I put them in my journal. And if I have a really big, important show, I call in all my spirits, and I say, “Tom, stand behind me. Prince, stand with me.” I ask for their help, because I know they’re up there. The Prince thing started a long time ago, because sometimes even before Prince died, I would say that. I wish Prince was here and he could just walk with me out there; because of his performing ability and how good he was on stage, sometimes I’d just go, “Come with me.” And I really do feel the presence, you know. I mean, Tom and I were way, way better friends than I was friends with Prince, because I hardly ever saw Prince. When I did see Prince, we’d have some really important conversations, and we talked on the phone sometimes for a couple hours. But Tom was a different kind of friend. Tom was really my buddy friend. I spent a lot of time at Tom’s different houses, and a lot of time with his family when he was still married to Jane. And that was a very hard loss for me."

"…The reason I chose that kind of a platform boot was because the rest of my outfit is so filmy and floaty that I thought: If you’re going to wear that outfit, if you just wore a pair of stiletto high heels with ankle straps, it would look really pretty, but it would be way too airy-fairy. But if you put on a pair of really strong suede boots to your knee, that have got a substantial little platform and a really good heel, then if somebody tries to drag you off that stage, you can seriously kick them with that boot. And so those boots are not just a fashion statement. They are to make people understand that I’m not a ballerina. As much as I would have loved to be a ballerina, I’m not a ballerina — I’m a rock ‘n’ roll singer. And so when people get too close to me, I can just feel my foot starting to raise, you know? It’s like my karate moment. A few times I’ve said, “Let go of my hand,” and some people don’t. And my foot starts to raise, and they get it, like, “I don’t want to be kicked with that boot. So I better back off.” So they have their moments where I feel like they’re a weapon."

"We all did everything we could do to try and talk her out of [quitting]. But you look in someone's eyes and you can tell they're finished. As Taylor Swift would say: 'We are never ever getting back together ever!' That's what Chris was saying... But I'd beg, borrow and scrape together $5 million and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That's how much I miss her."

"I'm going to spend my life writing poems, turning them into music that will affect people and touch their hearts. I'm going to write the songs that people can't write for themselves."

"I phoned Prince out of the blue, hummed a melody, and he listened," … "I hung up, and he came over within the hour. He listened again, and I said, 'Do you hate it?' He said, 'No,' and walked over to the synthesizers that were set up, was absolutely brilliant for about twenty five minutes, and then left. He was so uncanny, so wild, he spoiled me for every band I've ever had because nobody can exactly re-create—not even with two piano players-what Prince did all by his little self."

"That’s the words: "So I’m back to the velvet underground"—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—”back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was.""

"When I thought I was dying in rehab in 1994, 'I Won't back Down' was my mantra. It lifted my up out of the pain and made me fight through it. 'The Waiting'... summed up my life. We can't stand waiting, we rock 'n' roll men and women. Tom Petty's songs are like a great book that you revisit when you need help. His songs make me better."

"Lindsey [Buckingham] and I went up to Aspen and we went to somebody's incredible house and they had a piano and I had my guitar with me and I went in their living room, looking out over the incredible Aspen sky and I wrote 'Landslide.'"

"I look around at all the girl singers, and I think they're all my children... and they're all going to do this... And, yes, maybe I inspired them because I did get through a lot, and I did have the same problems that they're going to have. You do have to give up a lot for it."

"It's just about a lady who's a goddess of steeds and a maker of birds."

"I sat at my piano, a feminist woman, and I wrote it, to say that nothing you or anybody else can do to me can change the fact that, as the opening line goes: ‘Every night that goes between / I feel a little less.’...Freedom…I am a totally free woman, and I am independent, and that’s exactly what I always wanted to be."

"…If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs, I was doing a lot of drugs … I would have had to walk away…And I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy. And I thought: you know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission."